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Some films come along, and they just have it all: the laughter, the morals, the action, the imagination, and the visuals. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the full package; indeed, it delivers on every element that one would expect of an animated feature.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse follows young high-schooler Miles (Shameik Moore), who spends his time doing graffiti across the city with his Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali). At one of the hidden locations that Miles painted, he is bitten by a radioactive spider. When Peter Parker dies fighting Kingpin’s (Liev Schreiber) evil plan, Miles finds himself with no choice but to become the new one and only Spider-Man. Miles soon discovers that four more Spider hero versions from different parallel universes were brought into his universe: divorced, pot-bellied, depressed Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson); Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) as Spider-Woman; a black and white Spider-Man Noir (Nicholas Cage); an anime school girl Peni Parker (Kimiko Glen); and a Spider-Man costume wearing pig called Peter Porker (John Mulaney). The group have to stop Kingpin’s plan, return to their universes, and blow up Kingpin’s machine for good.

Not exactly what you expect when you think Spider-Man right? While the plot does get complicated, especially with this many Spider characters, the audience will not get a second to stare at their phones, nor will they get disoriented and confused. That is the exact beauty of it; the film is so outside the box from the previous live-action films, and borrows more from the whacky and whimsical comics, while simultaneously maintaining a touching familiarity.

The animation feature’s comedy is absolutely spot-on with constant laugh-out-loud jokes and perfect utilisation of every possible opportunity for a comedic moment. All this seems so effortless; it is as if the writers, the characters, and the filmmakers were not even really trying to make the audience laugh, which makes it so much better.

The absolute stand-out in the feature is the animation; the film’s makers have stylised the animation to combine comic book features with advanced animation technology, leaving us in awe.

The voice acting was very well-done and added so much to both the comedic and action aspects of the film. Additionally, the voices aided the audience greatly in sympathising with the characters. Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, and Mahershala Ali especially excelled with their voice acting and made their characters that much more realistic, relatable, and lovable.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is very out there but, the risk the makers took paid off and the result is a film that has a revolutionary animation style, a hilarious sense of humour, and a message that is neither too pretentious nor fake. In short, it’s weird, but the chances are, you will love it.